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Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

nytimes.com

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Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#401

Post by radmuzom »

dang wrote: post #398
refenestrator wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a civility burden, it's a factual burden. If somebody came onto HN posting obviously dumb stuff about how American people feel and think, they'd be downvoted, because everyone can see the obvious falsehood. But when it's Chinese, majority vote of Americans decides the truth! They will tell you the real deal on how things work inside China. And if someone calls them morons, we have you to come in and kee…

I'm not sure what your point is. Obviously majority vote does not decide the truth, and ignorant people don't know what they're talking about. And still we have to try to find a way to operate this forum and not allow people to destroy it. Burning the community down doesn't serve the truth in any way.

Nice talk, but you are one of the biggest offenders by using moderation powers to curtail discussion around topics which may not fit the majority world-view while refusing to treat the view of ignorant morons similarly. I have seen it happen several times over the last decade. And no, I am not going to present any "evidence" here.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#404

Post by avgcorrection »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #205
foverzar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where exactly do you draw the line between "whataboutism" and asserting similarities?

If someone wants to assert those similarities in a separate conversation, that's fine. Trying to derail an existing conversation about the actions of one country by mentioning actions of another country is a distraction at best, and arguing in bad faith at worst.

One man’s “distraction” is another man’s “broadening the conversation”.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#407

Post by bamboozled »

forgotmyoldname wrote: post #386
freewilly1040 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment isn’t saying the food is bad or that they don’t like the buildings. They are making a human rights critique. A few days seeing the sights is pretty irrelevant at best in this context.

I mean, I've also got friends there and speak the language to some extent now. It's not like I walked in on some sanitized tour for a day and left. The country has problems. But it's not a prison camp of 1.4 billion like the internet would make you think. Most people are pretty happy living there, even people who've been to other countries. It's definitely not a good place to be a political or religious activist. Mos…

I've traveled to countries for weeks, even months in total, then moved there, before the real issues of said country / culture / society become properly apparent and people open up about things. I'm not saying it was bad, but it takes a bit of time to read a place. Imagine that in a place where saying the wrong thing can have you landed in prison.

I've actually worked with some Chinese for years and it wasn't until I went out on a dinner that some really ugly stuff about why Han people in the past have been treated badly and that being the justification for the treatment of Uighur people, then I listened to an hour about why Muslim people are a problem and all the horror stories they'd read about them in the paper (it was clearly propaganda). Scarier for me one of their best friends at the time, who just missed the dinner, was Muslim. That wouldn't be an isolated case I'm sure.

This is not to single out Chinese by the way, I'm just reinforcing my point that it seems naive to just say, "I stopped by, looked pretty good, I'd go back, seems like a good place."

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#408

Post by thaumasiotes »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #396
thaumasiotes wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pinyin w + ang is ∅ + uang. Either way there's a w sound in there. Correct. > Wuhan starts with the same (or at least something very similar and indistinguishable to me) semivowel as the English word west. Nope. This one is ∅ + u. You can listen to the name of Wuhan here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWw6emkxmos#t=82

Yes I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there, don't you? Maybe it's not as clear as in the English word west, but you can't deny it's there no? Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound? Do 窝 and 喔 sound the same to you?

> Yes I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there, don't you?

No?

> Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound?

You could make that argument. But 武 never transitions out of it. That transition is how you get a glide (or semivowel) as opposed to a vowel. 我 is /wo/, with a brief /w/. 武 is /u/, and that vowel persists through the entire syllable. If you wanted to call it /w/ instead of /u/, you'd have a syllable with an onset and no rime, and your /w/ would last much too long to be called a semivowel.

> Do 窝 and 喔 sound the same to you?

I can't really speak to this, but I'll assume by 喔 you mean something that is like 窝 without the w- onset. Something like 哦?

They don't sound the same. This actually raises an interesting question...

> I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there

Am I right that you're a native Mandarin speaker? Mandarin doesn't distinguish between /wu/ and /u/, or at least no minimal pair exists that would prove the distinction is drawn. (Granted, the sequence /wu/ is not at all common in English, but we do have a minimal pair -- woo / ooh -- as long as you're willing to accept "ooh" as a word.) The lack of a distinction in Mandarin leaves the judgment of a Mandarin speaker open to question.

seanmcdirmid mentioned 服务 - do you also clearly hear a W sound there?

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#409

Post by Valakas_ »

blitzar wrote: post #217
raimundjoss wrote: post #33

So much of social media pre-supposes that no entity would spend the kinda money to influence an issue. They didn't take a state with limited resources into account.

It turns out you can spice things up on social media with relatively modest ad spends, the mob are so desperate to be incited that you dont even need to light the match.

We need to stop talking about "the mob" as if these people came through a membrane from another universe and are fundamentally non-humans and different from us. Instead of being condescending to people maybe it would be more useful to understand why this behavior happens, instead of dismissing it as "weak mindedness" or "anger issues".

The "mob" are people that are probably finding little meaning in life. Their "match" is probably feeling like they have something to fight for instead of their grueling 9-5 soul sucking work to pay debt in order to enrich just a few.

It's easy for humans to also externalize pain. They might be angry for very valid reasons, but which they feel powerless to change, and that anger is still in their body, needing, indeed a match to escape. Repressed anger causes disease (cf. Gabor Mate). It's a natural instinct to act out and let out misdirected anger.

Talking about "mob" is like talking about "witches" 400 years ago(pharmaceuts) or "hysteric women" 100 years ago (women with BPD or PTSD). It's dehumanizing and misses the point, and in a few years people will look back at comments like this like we look at witch burning and the stone age practices of psychiatry a few years ago.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#410

Post by ethbr0 »

xxpor wrote: post #374
alistairSH wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I see it locally with shill groups acting at the behest of real estate developers.

And then there's the other side of it, where people accuse people on the other side of being shills with 0 evidence. It's extremely common in NIMBY v YIMBY fights.

That's why accusing someone of shilling with is in extremely poor taste.

It's effectively impossible to prove (or refute), so why waste thought and text on it?

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